Trying to keep it simple

March Angelus

Fr. Dale

As I write this, we are half way through Lent. It has been a delightful journey thus far. Our Wednesday fellowship group (meeting at 9:30 am) has moved from discussion (and practice) of prayer to a metaphysical discussion on Being and God as that which is. With that group we have to try to keep things simple, but we cover lots of ground. On Wednesday evenings, between 45 and 60 folks from the east Honolulu parishes have been meeting to consider various perspectives on the Joseph of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Each time we have met it has been better than the last. And it took me 3 sessions to finally get a bowl of mushroom soup. Joseph has been seen as a member of a dysfunctional family, as a sign of redemption, as reminder of the need to work against slavery in the world today, . . . and upcoming Joseph as dreamer and Joseph as a way of seeing ourselves. As I began preaching, Lent just beginning, I stumbled onto a phrase that has become my personal mantra for the season. Show up Listen Speak heart-felt truth Let go of the results These 4 steps have become for me a short-hand way of understanding my daily task of living faithfully, under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don’t say all that needs to be said, but they provide a road-map for me of what I must do in order to recognize God’s sovereignty over my life. The other day I happened to share with the small youth group meeting the message I tell myself at least once a week. They didn’t really believe me. I said, “I don’t necessarily do a very good job of it, but I tell myself that it’s the goal.” The acronym means: “keep it simple stupid.” It originated with the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous and its Twelve Steps to sobriety. But I apply the wisdom of “keep it simple stupid” to my daily affairs and to my aim in preaching, teaching, and counseling. Now the fact is that I am not very good at keeping it simple. The “stupid” part of the saying is usually the loudest for me. “Don’t think too highly of yourself, Dale,” I hear it say. “Take yourself much less seriously.” As the bumper sticker said, that’s why angels can fly, because they regard themselves lightly. Many before me have noted that the 12 steps are in fact a marvelous short-hand way to understand the Christian life. They match remarkable well with the way of life outlined by saints and holy men and women of ages past. These are the original Twelve Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous: We admitted we were powerless over . . . that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to . . . , and to practice these principles in all our affairs. I learned some time ago a short-hand way of remembering the 12 steps, reducing them to 3: “I can’t. God can. I think I’ll let him.” Now these don’t really cover all of the steps, only the 1st half. The 2nd half could be summarized by the opening of St. Mary’s mission statement, “Share God’s love.” I can’t God can I think I’ll let Him Share His Love Easter (in this short-hand environment) is getting to the end of the 12∕4 steps (which is really a way to get to the beginning of them all over again). Easter is recognition that in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have indeed been awakened, we have been raised with him, we have become a new creature. Thank you for the journey. I invite you into the simple steps that proceed from showing up to sharing God’s love.

Season of Hope

Season of Hope

Fr Dale

December Angelus

Thanksgiving Day is past. The stores have rolled out their Christmas promotions and decorations. We have entered the “holiday season.” As has been said countless times before, such a pattern of time is not the church’s time but the culture’s time. During my 2 weeks of vacation at the beginning of November, I concentrated on doing 3 things: Resting, Reading, and Exercise. I did tolerably well at each of them, which is to say I could have done better but I could have done worse. In the reading department, while at Camp Mokule’ia, I read Sephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell. I had eyed this book in the bookstore from its first appearance, but put off buying it. Finally a friend loaned it to me. Hawking, for those of you unfamiliar with the name, is a world-famous physicist (perhaps familiar from the image of him in a motorized wheel-chair, since he has suffered from ALS for many years). He made his name in physics because of his work in demonstrating the theoretical existence of “black holes.” He now holds the same chair of Mathematics at Cambridge as did Isaac Newton 300 years ago. Of late, Hawking is well-known to many because he has done better than most at making contemporary physics accessible to ordinary folks like myself. The reading My reading was exhilarating and challenging. When I was 16 years old I had some facility in science and math. 40 years later it is all a faint glimmer in the past. It turns out the stars in the sky are somethig like that glimmer of the past. The light we see sparkling in the night sky actually left those stars millions of years ago. And that’s just the beginning of the journey that Hawking offers the reader. Einstein’s contributions, string theory (wherein there are postulated many more dimensions than the 4 to which we are accustomed: 3d + time) and much more awaits the reader. Among the mind-bending discussions in the book, a fair amount of time is spent considering the possibility of time travel. Though the question is hotly debated among today’s scientists, Hawking believes that there is a good possibility that time-travel is theoretically (as opposed to “practically”) possible. You may well be asking why I am writing about this here and why I think you might care. The reason grows out of my own conviction – it is a foundation of my faith in God – that “God is Truth.” For this reason I believe that anyone who is able to know or glimpse any facet of what is true, that person is knowing something of God. Scientists, for me, can teach me something about God – not everything, to be sure, but something. So I pay attention and am interested in what they are saying – as I try to pay attention to what artists, musicians, even politicians are saying and doing. They each are capable of teaching me something of God. From my own experience of God, I am not at all astonished by the idea of time being slippery, the present slipping into the past and then again into the future. Something like that proclamation is built into our brief exclamation of faith at the Eucharist: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Ancient meditation on the meaning of the Seder meal at Passover indicates that while the stories of past events are retold (e.g. enslaved Israelites in Egypt being delivered by Yahweh) what was past is made present and God’s deliverance is made real for us. The same thing is believed by Christians to occur at the Eucharistic prayer. What I found intriguing about my reading of Hawking was that he seemed to primarily consider the possibilty of going back in time. He wasn’t really considering the possibility of discovering where it’s all headed. The reason for that, as he freely admits, is that as a positivist scientist, he is interested in the evidence that can be seen and demonstrated. As Christians, we have a different starting point, a different platform for hearing the evidence and for looking out from this place we call home and the present time. In particular, I have in mind the essential nature of “hope” in the Christian view of the world and the “universe.” We are now entering that season of hope, approaching the “holidays” as the popular culture calls them. In the language of the church, we are ending a church year and beginning another with the anticipation, the waiting, the expectation, the listening, and the preparation that is involved with celebrating the Nativity of Jesus the Messiah. The Meaning of Faith 1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear: 2 When I was in college, I laughed at the stories from a couple of comedians based in Maine. They told stories that were local to the northeast of the U.S., but somehow the comedy played in other parts of the country too. I was able to “get it.” One of the stories I still remember is of the directions being given to a traveler in some rural area of Maine. The local person begins by pointing to the barn “down thar” where you turn left and go a pretty far piece, then you make a right turn at the big oak tree, . . . and after a long account, he ends by saying, “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.” I thought of that story because it seems to me that you can’t get from Stephen Hawking’s starting point to the place of hope as told in the Letter to the Hebrews or 1st Peter. As fantastical as Hawking’s reflections are, they are rooted in a rear-ward looking view of the universe. His universe in a nut-shell can’t include the place to which we are headed. Hope looks out to the future, to what we cannot yet see, but to which we are headed. It is our destination that is now unfolding. When my children were younger – and in their eyes I was big and strong – they would jump off the stairs into my arms. Sometimes there would be a contest to see how high up they could go. I enjoyed exercising with them their ability to trust. That seems to be the missing ingredient in the scientist’s view of the universe. It’s difficult for them to trust in what is unseen (or unmeasurable). When the eyes of faith look out at the universe, we can see all of what Stephen Hawking can see, looking backward. But we can also see that which we anticipate, that for which we long, that which is unfolding into our present. The season is upon us, and we begin to long for the coming (the advent) of Christmas. And as God is faithful, from ages past to the future ages, he appears among us, Emmanuel. The light that is come into the world illuminates our path so that both present, past and future are made manifest (Epiphany). And our journey continues. We proceed through the slow days and the fast ones, the lengthening (Lent) of days. And the God of ages past and the future ages continues with us. Finally, in the center of our life, at the beginning of the meaning of the universe, God’s Son comes to an end and a new beginning on the cross (Easter). God is with us. Praise be to Him who was, who is, and who is to come. The alpha and the omega.

Change and transitions

Angelus February 2007

Fr. Dale

I returned last week from 4 days attending a conference put on by the national church. The title was “Upward Bound.” It was billed as a follow up to workshops titled “Start Up Start Over.” I was interested in the work because of my conviction that St. Mary’s is now going through an important transition in its life of just over 100 years. I hoped to gain some insight both for myself and for the congregation, some tools and some new skills, that would help us along this time of change. The diocese is quite obviously going through change that is marked by the election of a new bishop. The change confronting us is less obvious and is really not unlike the changes facing congregations all over the country. Linda Lingle was aware of a similar kind of dynamic when she gave her “State of the State” address this year. She said, Some think it is easier to keep doing what we have been doing. They think it is too hard to change. But, hard or not . . . change will happen. The question for us to answer is, will we just let change happen to us in the coming years . . . or will we create the change we want to see so that future generations are able to live a good life in Hawai’i? I had a somewhat quirky approach to our workshop because the title of it sounded like a program I was quite aware of growing up in Colorado. “Outward Bound” grew out of the observation that under similar conditions of stress, some people some people survive and some perish. The observation was first made in the Navy during World War II. When a ship was torpedoed and sinking, some sailors survived and others didn’t. Outward Bound was intended to train people to be a part of the survivors. How to function well under extreme stress. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t Outward Bound, it was Upward Bound. However, because of my association, I had a thought that perhaps Upward Bound was intended to train people (leaders) in congregations to be able to be survivors at a time when many Episcopal congregations are facing deep questions of survival. Why is it that some congregations flourish while others in more or less similar circumstances perish? And what can we do about it? Maybe the association was intentionally made by the organisers? As I write, I am aware of Lent being upon us. It always seems to come too early for me, whatever the actual calendar date may be. It no doubt has something to do with what “keeping Lent” means to a pastor of a small congregation. It may also have to do with an inner voice that says, “This year, Dale, you should do better than last.” Every year is new, and yet every year it is the same. Not unlike the rhythm of our lives. Things are constantly changing and forever familiar. We help to make them that way. We don’t want to be overtaken by the “new” and we want things to get better. We want there to be an upward trajectory in our lives, while not disrupting the things that we know and are familiar. Keeping Lent in the wider “catholic” tradition of which we are a part means to intentionally travel the way of the cross that Jesus’ entire life was. If during the Epiphany season we have heard of the highlights of Jesus’ emerging ministry that reveal his identity as Savior and Lord, during Lent we travel in lightning fashion the main road that he took – from Nazareth to Jerusalem, from promise and excitement to death on the cross. As we travel, we expect that the ship we are on is impregnable, it cannot be sunk. We anticipate advancing from one victory to another, from one awesome sign to another. That’s what Jesus did, afterall. The first sign at Cana. Wonders and healings that followed him wherever he went. No wonder the disciples anticipated that this was going to be a big deal. They just didn’t know what kind of big deal it was to be. And so we (at least I) get surprised each Lent as we discover that the end of the road is an ignoble execution. Year by year I really do end up experiencing a little piece of Jesus’ way of the cross. Enough. God’s mercy gives me just enough. Not too much. Not too little. The main opportunity for keeping Lent that we are offering this year at St. Mary’s will occur on Wednesday evenings. The congregations of east Honolulu will be gathering for a light supper, followed by a teaching and discussion about Joseph the Patriarch (son of Jacob). This is the first such cooperative venture that I am aware of on this side of the mountains among our Episcopal congregations. I very much hope it is a success that we can build on. This effort will really begin the day before Ash Wednesday with a pancake supper and video presentation at Holy Nativity. Erni Uno was the last to spearhead such a dinner at St. Mary’s. I will be remembering him on that day. The schedule for Ash Wednesday will be slightly different from what it has been in the past. There will be 2 services offered, one at noon and the other at 7:00 p.m. Ashes will be imposed at both services and the schedule should allow almost everyone to attend one of them. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. (BCP, p. 265)

To climb mountains

Sermon: Last Epiphany 2/18/07

Pride in Colorado expedition up Mt. Everest

It's a very ordinary story that I have to tell this morning. It happens that it is my story -- but it could be that of any of you. It's a story of longing for a closeness with God. It is about seeking God in the high places -- and finding him in the ordinary. It is a story of conversion not unlike that faced by Jesus' good friends Peter and James and John. They had left everything to follow him, to learn from him -- but still they didn't really get it until they had followed all the way to Calvary and beyond -- to the empty tomb.

"If we can pull it off," Norman Dyhrenfurth said of the West Ridge, "it would be the biggest possible thing still to be accomplished in Himalayan mountaineering." This judgment came from the man best qualified to make it. He was leading the American Mount Everest Expedition when he said it; he had already climbed in many lands, had been on four previous Himalayan expeditions including the Swiss Expedition to Everest, and he had been dreaming of the West Ridge for years. SIERRA CLUB SAN FRANCISCO Copyright 1965 from the foreword . . .

The West Ridge

It was especially important to me that 2 members of the team were from Colorado. Dick Pownall I knew slightly because of my involvement with the Colorado Mountain Club and the Colorado Ski Patrol.

I experienced a mild disappointment that the Colorado members weren't on the final assault.

But the experience helped to ignite a longing within to be in the wilderness -- to go to places that not many had gone before.

Mountaintop experiences

Mt. Athos

Because the longing in my heart was really a longing experience God -- to be close in some way to the power of God -- eventually the longing for the wilderness took the shape of a spiritual seeking. I looked to other kinds of mountains and mountain experiences.

Like Mt. Everest, which I never expected to climb, I became enchanted for a time with the spirit of Mt. Athos.

Monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece

Metaphors and Symbols for Religious and Spiritual Experiences

Mountains have always been places where God was especially prone to be encountered. Consider these words about religious language:

"Language which authentically describes a spiritual experience transcends verifiable knowledge and is very imaginative, poetic, metaphoric and inexact. It is language stretched to the breaking point. In speaking about spiritual matters, we are always beating around the bush, albeit a burning bush."

". . . Authentic spiritual language about God does not confuse the map with the territory, the symbol with the thing. Literalism concentrates on the letter and misses the spirit; it gets the words but never the music, creates a spiritual tone-deafness. You can starve to death trying to eat a cookbook."

Although direct and precise words aren't adequate to the task of answering the question, I'd like to suggest that metaphors will do very well. In fact, some metaphors convey the essence of a religious or spiritual experience so well that they have been used by people throughout the world and in different cultures.

For example, take the metaphor of a sacred peak. Such mountains have been used as a cosmic axis for centuries—Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, The Mount of Olives, Mount Olympus, ... During the Second World War, a French mystic and writer, Rene Daumal, drew on this symbolism and wrote Mount Analogue, an allegorical novel of a supreme mountain where people may awake from the slumber of their usual state of mind and ascend to higher levels of consiousness:

"In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man. . . . For a mountain to play the role of Mount Analogue, the ultimate symbolic mountain, its summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings as nature has made them. It must be unique, and it must exist geographically." By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

One of my climbing partners introduced me to that book -- it was many years and much suffering before he would find his way to Christ's embrace.

Malcolm Muggeridge: story of conversion

It was the priest who brought me back to the church who introduced me to Malcolm Muggeridge. MM was going through hiw own personal journey of gradual conversion. And that was how my priest friend found me.

I found a keen connection with Muggeridge -- his quest and his "curmudgeonly" attitude toward establishment institutions.

He wrote wonderfully, curmudgeonly (giving me the word)

"As Hilaire Belloc truly remarked, the Church must be in God's hands because, seeing the people who have run it, it couldn't possibly have gone on existing if there weren't some help from above. I also felt unable to take completely seriously . . . the validity or permanence of any form of human authority . . . There is . . . some other process going on inside one, to do with faith which is really more important and more powerful. I can no more explain conversion intellectually than I can explain why one falls in love with someone whom one marries. It's a very similar thing . . ."

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. Malcolm Muggeridge

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus. Malcolm Muggeridge

Muggeridge became known as the "discoverer" of Mother Teresa, whom he first interviewed in London in 1968. He told the world about her deeds through a television documentary filmed in Calcutta called Something Beautiful for God, and through a best-selling book of the same name. He was well-known for his wit and profound writings (e.g., "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream"). He wrote two volumes of an autobiography called Chronicles of Wasted Time. The first volume (1972) was The Green Stick. The second volume (1973) was The Infernal Grove. A projected third volume The Right Eye was started but never completed.

Something Beautiful for God

My search for spiritual experience

Mother Theresa

Before embracing Christianity I looked for spiritual enlightenment in hallucinogenic drugs. I quickly discovered it wasn't there.

I was curious about a cult in our college town (Colorado Springs). I was disinclined. A friend I went with was “caught” and eventually became a leader.of what became a white supremacist group in Idaho and Montana.

Later, after conversion, I was interested in Charismatic/Pentecostal experiences. Here, too, eventually I concluded that this path was not a “be-all and end-all.”

My conversion came from having a "taste" of the sacred at Good Friday. It was a simple parish. Not an unusal celebration of the liturgy, though it was “high church”. God had captured me.

Consider:

• Moses on Mt. Sinai -- but then returns to the people

• Jesus at Transfiguration -- revealing glory, but bringing his disciples right down to the nitty-gritty of life.

Like Jesus, our call from God is not to dwell on the mountains. It is to plow into the plains. Into the everyday life that surrounds us.

And that way, leads us to the least among us, to those in need, ...

Sisters of Charity at work

... and to Calvary.

To walk with Christ, to be a disciples, is to have a longing for God -- to haave seen a glimpse, to have heard a voice, to have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet --

But then to go down into the valley, as Moses did, as Peter and James and John did, as Mother Theresa did,

And there to embrace the world. To love it. To bring some healing as God provides. To be a companion. And to tell anyone who will listen, the story of climbing the mountain and coming back down again.

That's our story for today.